The last time I posted was on December 2nd, which was the morning I woke up to pine needles and ornaments all over the floor. I've been battling it out with the cats all week and so far the score is Cats: 7, Brooklet: 0
We spent about 2 days ignoring the mess on the floor. In our logic we saw no need to clean anything up because the mess would just reappear almost instantly. Instead, we got a floor full of pine needles and Christmas ornaments, random Christmas ornaments all over the house, and a small branch from the Christmas tree in our bedroom. See, the part we didn't account for was the fact that once the ornaments were on the floor, they would become movable cat toys, and therefore end up all over the house. I can't remember which day Mr. V replaced all of the ornaments and vacuumed up the pine needles, but the serene beauty of our tree lasted only a few hours (the ornaments were replaced during daily cat nap time). Later on in the day we started to find a few ornaments on the ground, and Mr. V replaced those again. The battle of hanging ornaments up and knocking them down began again....
We did mange to capture a few more pictures of the cats hanging out under the tree:
Image #1: This is Moses. Note the pine needles ALL over the floor around him, the piece of my red and green garland and the random ornament in front of the camera.
Image #2: Meepers by the fireplace (the ash on the fireplace was a result of Mr. V cleaning out the fireplace just moments before this picture was taken). Note the random ornament that is sitting in front of Meepers.
Image#3: This one is dark, but this is Oreo taking his turn at napping under the tree.
Image #4: Sheena taking a cat nap under the tree.
Then in non-feline news, I had an eventful rest of the week.
On Wednesday I went to my friend Mugs house in Anacortes to try out her Cricut machine. I've been dying to get one of these wonderful machines for quite some time now, but I had never tried one out. She showed me how to use the machine and I am officially in love, and need one of my own. I made 2 small paper ornaments, and she created a gift tag out of a Christmas tree that I cut. She also made a small Christmas card that I took home with the rest of my items to attempt to convince Mr. V that I need a Cricut machine ASAP. The good news is that he was impressed by the items, and even humored me by looking on ebay for inexpensive machines with me. (We did manage to find one that was brand new, $450, and comes with 1 additional cartridge that you don't get to choose, and 2 more cartridges that you can choose, along with the 2 that come with the machine automatically. I'm currently watching this item, trying to convince Mr. V that we need to do more than just look, and actually buy it, since that seems to be the best deal that I can find.)
Image #1: This is the back of the 2 ornaments I made and the back of the gift tag that my friend made.
Image #2: This is the front of the ornaments and the gift tag.
Thursday afternoon was spent at the quilt shop working on my starter quilt for the class I have been taking, and waiting for the quilt lady (aka Debra - the shop owner) to alter my Christmas dress. Mr. V's squadron Christmas party is tonight, and I had bought a cute festive dress, that was too big on me. The quilt lady had told us that she can do simple dress alterations, so I took it to her. I expected to pay a small amount of money to have it altered, since it would have cost $25 or more had I taken it to an actual alteration place, but she ended up doing it entirely for free! I was a little surprised by that, but very greatful. I also discovered that she will sew on new Navy ranks for free, but not many people know this. She doesn't advertise it, but she and the lady that owns the yarn store across from her will sew ranks on for free so that these Navy boys won't have to pay to have them sewn on by the tailor on base. I'm sure some people are perfectly capable of sewing their new ranks on by themselves, but Mr. V doesn't trust me to do it, and since he loves saving money in any way possible, I'm going to have him take his uniforms to her when he gets promoted in May.
Thursday night was spent going out to dinner to a Mexican restaurant with one of my new friends and her husband. We went to El Cazador here in Oak Harbor and I was very impressed with their tacos. All I ever eat at Mexican restaurants is a plate of tacos, so they had to pass the Brooklet test of satisfaction, which they did. The Spanish rice was also very good, and I ate more food off of my plate than I usually do at a Mexican restaurant.
Friday I woke up feeling kind of weird. I chalked it up to allergies and went about my day. Nothing exciting happened during my day - just more cleaning and organizing and fighting with the cats about the Christmas tree.
Saturday night was date night for Mr. V and me. I woke up feeling tired, and just assumed that I was tired, nothing more. Mr. V slept in really late that morning, which was wonderful because he needed to catch up on sleep. (However a 5am flight this morning probably just erased all of the catching up he did over the weekend.) We spent the day lounging around, hanging Christmas ornaments back up, and then at night we went to the Oak Harbor Christmas tree lighting and the 4th annual Holiday Stroll. The tree was lit at 6:00 in a cute little ceremony. It was NOT the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree by any means, but it was a cute ceremony, which began when Santa Claus arrived on a pirate ship, then went on to the tree to light it. A large, scrawny tree with plain white lights on it was lit and then we continued the Holiday Stroll. Every year for Christmas, the local businesses in the area try to encourage buying from local people, and host this stroll. The stroll took place from 10am to 8pm. Every person was given a card to collect initials from 10 of the local businesses, then the card was entered into a drawing for $500. It was a great way for people to check out local shops that they never would have looked at otherwise.
We started our stroll at 4pm, but you are going to have to check back later to read about it and about the rest of my weekend :-). For now I am going to go be productive, and I will continue this in another post later on today.
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